What Was Missing
by Dolphingirl32173
Summary: Beside a stone memorial, one lonely jounin thinks about the recent disasters in her life and finds that she is losing the will to live on …


What was Missing

DG32173

Sarah: okay, this is gonna be my first _ever_ pure angst story, despite it being a one-shot. Or as purely angst as I can get. I'm not really one for angst, because I'm not one for caring for downhearted moods. So I might tie in a _teensy_ bit of insinuated romance, but not much. I don't own the Naruto anime, manga, or cast.

_**SUMMARY**_

Beside a stone memorial, one lonely jounin thinks about the recent disasters in her life and finds that she is losing the will to live on …

_**NOTE**_

**(Authors note)**

"Talking"

'Thinking'

Memories 

_Scene change in memories_

* * *

**STORY**

Dull sea-green eyes shadowed by tired, faded pink bangs stare at three of many names of those she knew so long ago on the stone memorial her former teacher, whose name is also carved in the cold dark stone, had shown her and two of the owners of the multiple other names on the first day that they had met him. The bereft and hurting woman owning these features is kneeling in the crisp white snow exactly one foot from the memorial to pay her respects one last time before … she'd rather not think about that right now. Her sight becomes blurred with tears as she remembers how those names came to be carved into the everlasting memorial. "You bastard, you should have taken me with you! That way we could have died together!" she whispers angrily to one of the three names; the name most important and closest to her heart. Anger, sorrow, and despair are all she has left. All she has left after that war so long ago … yet not long enough …

"_Dammit, Sakura! Get down!" an war-roughened male voice says, pushing the pink-haired young woman to the ground to get her out of the way of the oncoming kunai. The dark clad brunette jumps in front of her, taking dozens of kunai to his chest, stomach, arms, and legs._

"_Sasuke!" Sakura cries, horrified. She stands up to go heal him with one of her multitudes of medical jutsus._

"_I'm fine," Sasuke says, pain evident in his voice. "Just go back to camp and look after the injured! They need you more right now!"_

_Sakura realizes immediately that arguing with the stubborn brunette is a lost cause and nods. "Right," she says softly._

_She turns to head back to camp when strong arms scoop her up and takes off for camp while carrying her. She fights momentarily from instinctive fear before a deep voice reassures her. "Sakura, it's me," the very familiar voice says._

"_Kakashi-koi," she murmurs, giving her ex-teacher-slash-husband a look of gratitude as he carries her towards the camp_

_Suddenly, a small explosion occurs behind them, Sakura looks over her husband's shoulder just in time to see an even more severely injured Sasuke use a jutsu that will blow himself up along with everyone within several dozen meters of him. "SASUKE! NOOOOOOOO!" she screams in horror and pain, watching one of her two self-proclaimed brothers blow himself up for the cause of saving their village._

_Kakashi winces in emotional pain; he knows what had just happened without even looking back. Sakura starts to struggle, trying to get back to help her friend. Kakashi's grip tightens. "He's gone, Sakura," the older jounin says mournfully. "It won't do anyone any good for you to go back."_

"_But he's my friend! I have to help him!" Sakura cries, her struggles slowly dying though she tries to deny the fact that someone she has known for so long had left the living so brutally._

"_He's gone!" Kakashi says, gripping his wife tighter. "We can't help him now! This is _war,_ Sakura! We can't save _everyone!"_ he says, tears slipping from his one visible eye._

_Sakura's struggles stop as she suddenly starts crying into Kakashi's shoulder from the pain of the loss. Kakashi holds Sakura close as he continues to run for the camp, trying to soothe his beloved's pain as best he can._

_Three days later_

_Just getting over the death of Sasuke, Sakura's flame of despair is reignited even harsher when word comes from the front lines: Naruto and Kakashi died wiping out Orochimaru and Itachi for good. Slumping to the ground in the middle of Tsunade's tent, she starts sobbing her overwhelming grief into her hands. All of her closest friends and her beloved husband … gone. Ino, Kiba, Shikamaru, Lee, Neji, Hinata, Tenten, Shino, Iruka, and even Konohamaru and his two childhood friends all went down two days ago saving the camp from a large group of Sound ninja that had tried to come and kill off everyone here._

_Now she has no support group to fall back on; Tsunade and Shizune are overcome with their own grief. The war has ended, the enemy has been completely wiped out except for a few women and the few children too young to take up a kunai and fight … but at a very terrible price to the Leaf village. All the Leaf's best of the best fighters, other than Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Sakura, are gone. Two days later, Sakura vanished from the village, her ancestral home found burnt to the ground and everything inside just a pile of ashes now. She wasn't inside when it went; the nin dogs had thankfully let them know that much. They figured she had left to leave behind the painful memories of her friends and husband that she saw everywhere she went. True. She was also thought to have cracked under the stress of loss and ran off to kill herself alone. How very wrong they were there._

Sakura's tears and memories slowly stop coming as night falls. Once the sun has completely set, she stands up and walks closer to the memorial and traces the kanji spelling the one name she values above all the rest: "Hatake, Kakashi". Her throat clenches from the pain in her heart and in her soul. He had her promise before he left that final time that, if he were to die, she should wait five years to the day before she decides to follow him to the afterlife by her own hand. She had told him to not talk of death like that. He had smiled sadly and kissed her deeply; she now knows that he somehow knew he was not going to see her again in this life. She has waited those long, sad, and lonely five years as she promised. And she can't bear to be away from him any longer.

"Oh, Kakashi-koi," she murmurs around the lump in her throat. Tears start to fall from her eyes again and freeze on her face as she pulls a kunai from its sheath hidden in her boot. "I kept my promise," she murmurs. "But I can't stand it. I can't stand being separated from you any longer. My heart has this giant hole in it … a hole left from when I found out you died. My soul has a hole there too, a hole that held your love in it. And every day, these holes grow larger and larger; they are growing, Kakashi, and they are growing fast. I don't remember anything but sadness anymore. Sadness, pain, despair, anger … but mostly I remember your face and those emotions triple in strength whenever I do, which is so very often. I have to come now," she whispers to the breeze. "I _have_ to come to you _now_, Kakashi!" she cries out, plunging the kunai straight into her heart.

She is a medic nin, she knows with how much force to make the plunge with and the exact spot of her heart to plunge into so as to make it an instant death; she doesn't want to waste any time dying, that would keep her from her love so much longer. Crimson blood flies out and covers white snow, her silver dress, and the dark, cold stone; the red liquid pours out of her chest as the twenty-nine-year-old widow Hatake, Sakura slumps against the blood-stained dark stone memorial, dead the second the kunai buried into her skin; the pale fingers on her right hand rest above the name of her beloved.

------------------------223 years later------------------------

Early one winter morning, a young woman, only eighteen in age, looks up as she accidentally bumps into a man on her way to the park. Her sea-green eyes meet mix-matched black and red eyes. "I'm sorry," she apologizes quickly. She backs up a step to get a better look at him. He is wearing a navy blue long-sleeved shirt with a dark green vest over it and denim jeans. He has beautiful snow-colored hair. Despite the color of his hair, she can tell by his beautiful face he's not that much older than her; he's in his mid-twenties at the very oldest.

"No, it's entirely my fault," the man, only twenty-three in age, says politely. "My name is Hatake, Kakashi. What's yours?" he asks, examining the young woman in front of him. She has beautiful and long bubble-gum pink hair and pretty sea-green eyes. She is wearing a long silvery dress covered by an even longer black leather coat and a cream-colored scarf.

"Haruno, Sakura," she responds, smiling shyly while brushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.

"Sakura," he says, tasting the name. He decides he likes it. "Would you like to get something to eat, Sakura?" he asks, offering his arm to her.

"Sure," the younger woman says, taking his arm. Both conveniently 'forgot' about everything they were supposed to do that day, deciding that getting to know each other would be a much better way to pass the time. After all, who can deny themselves spending time with someone they fall in love with on first sight? And to think, had he not had a late streak etched deeply into his soul, they would never have met that day …

------------------------

And so two souls in love find each other once again in another lifetime. Five years separated their first deaths, five years separate their age at second meeting. And maybe this time, they will be able to stay with each other for much, _much_ longer. And maybe this time, they will realize what was missing in their souls and hearts much, _much_ sooner.

* * *

Sarah: so, how do you like? Okay, okay, I know I said there wouldn't be much romance, and there _wasn't!_ At least, I didn't see that much! Most of the story is angsty. I think. I can't write angst as the main category very easily. I don't know much about angst, even though my usual feelings are angsty. That's my life for you: confusing as hell. 


End file.
